This guide will enable technologists to communicate with each other and their constituents in ways that invite their participation and help them feel welcome and safe. Use this guide as a reference of terms to avoid and inclusive alternatives.
What is Inclusive Language?
Inclusive language values the importance of words and their impact.
Inclusive communication is:
- Respectful
- Accurate
- Inclusive of all
Inclusive communication is free of language that expresses:
- Stereotypes
- Negative expectations
- Limitations
Inclusive communication enables everyone to contribute diverse perspectives and feel like they belong.
Why it matters
Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for UW–Madison. By adapting your language, you can involve your entire audience more fully and inspire them to contribute more confidently.
Examples of non-inclusive language and suggested alternatives
Here are some examples of jargon that obscure meaning and exclude people, along with their meanings and suggested alternatives. This list is only a start. There are many everyday words and phrases with discriminatory origins.
Discriminatory language
| Term | Alternative | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| Black hat hacker | Criminal, bad actor | Criminal hackers that concentrate on malicious breaking cyber defenses for money or fame. |
| Black box testing | functional testing, acceptance testing | A method of software testing that examines the functionality of an application without peering into its internal structures or workings. |
| Blacklist | Deny List | Listings of known bad websites, IP addresses, usernames, etc. |
| Gray beard | Mentor | Older, more experienced IT or cybersecurity personality. One sought after for wisdom born from study and experience over a lifetime. |
| Gray hat hacker | Hacktivist | Hacker who exploits a weakness in cyber defense to bring the weakness to the attention of the owner, with the goal of improving security. |
| Low man on the totem pole | Junior-level |
Person of lower rank or status
|
| Master | Primary | Primary record, file or recording of data. |
| Native feature | built-in feature | A feature or functionality of a product that comes directly from the vendor and works immediately when the product is placed in service. |
| Pow-wow |
Confab, huddle, chat, brainstorm
|
A short conversation |
| Red team | Cyber offense | Offensive security or “ethical hacking” of any type. This could include authorized penetration testing, physical hacks, black-box testing, web app scanning, compliance validation. This could also include use of social engineering techniques as part of phishing drills. |
| Slave | Secondary | Secondary record, file or recording of data. |
| White box testing | Glass box testing, clear box testing | A method of software testing that tests internal structures or workings of an application, as opposed to its functionality |
| White hat hacker | Specific job title, e.g., Cyber Defense Analyst | Ethical hackers who focus on testing cyber defenses as part of an organized corporate development process, cybersecurity plan or strategy. |
| White team | Cyber exercise cell | Cybersecurity exercise coordination cells. Those who act as referees during exercises, including tabletop events, limited objective experiments, or specific component testing in a real-world scenario. |
| Whitelist | Allow list | Listings of acceptable websites, IP addresses, usernames, etc. |
| Yellow team | DevSecOps team | Teams of developers, programmers, application designers, software engineers or architects. |
Ableist language
Ableist language is conveys negative connotations with respect to various disabilities. Though often unintentional, ableist language conveys disrespect to people with disabilities.
| Term | Alternative | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| Blind to, deaf to | Ignore | Unwilling or unable to heed a message |
| Blinding | Anonymizing | Removing irrelevant personal information from documents, as may be done prior to evaluating candidates for a position. |
| Crippled | Deactivated | A product or feature the functionality of which has been deliberately limited |
| Dummy value | Placeholder value | An arbitrary value used in place of an unknown one, or one to be supplied or defined later |
| Sanity check | Smoke test, quick check, confidence check, coherence check |
A basic test to quickly evaluate whether a claim or the result of a calculation can possibly be true. |
| Tone deaf | inconsiderate, thoughtless, careless | An insensitivity to nuances or connotations |
Gendered terms
Using gender neutral language means speaking and writing in a way that does not discriminate against a particular sex, social gender or gender identity, and does not perpetuate gender stereotypes.
| Term | Alternative |
|---|---|
| Chairman | Chair, moderator, chairperson |
| Grandfathered | Legacy status, preexisting |
| Guys, gals | Folks, team, y’all |
| Man, mankind | Humanity, people, humankind |
| Manned | Staffed |
| Man hours, manpower | Capacity, person hours |
| Man-in-the-middle | attacker-in-the-middle, or the specific type of attack, such as eavesdropping |
| Right-hand man | Counterpart, indispensable |
| Sister school, sister campus | Other UW-System campus |
Violent terms
Terms with violent connotations are distressing to some and may distract from your message.
| Term | Alternative | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| Demilitarized zone (DMZ) | Perimeter network | A physical or logical subnetwork that contains and exposes an organization’s external-facing services to an untrusted, usually larger, network such as the Internet. |
| Hang | Freeze, stop responding | When either a process or system ceases to respond to inputs |
| Kill (a process) | Halt, stop | A command that is used in several popular operating systems to send signals to running processes |
| Kill two birds with one stone | One fell swoop | Complete two tasks or solve two problems with one action |
| Nuke | Delete | To intentionally delete the entire contents of a directory or folder, or of a storage volume such as a hard drive or partition |
How you can help
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